PSO2 News: The Gathering 6th Aug

With yesterday’s update, we could finally journey freely into the lands of Kuron. Bunch of other things have arrived too, some of which I have mixed opinions about so hey let’s have a look at some of them. Odd tidbits of information came out elsewhere so let’s gather some of those up too because why not.

Kuron

I do like this field’s aesthetic quite a bit, it’s certainly got a distinct colour theme to it and a few of the map pieces are quite interesting looking. It has both indoor and outdoor areas, with architecture in various states of disrepair with a natural cloud-top mountainous backdrop.

Hit the right head and make it scream!

The enemies that wander Kuron are certainly a varied bunch, from ghosts to clown cars. The centaur enemies also boast their own e-trials, with various (if simple) mechanics attached to them. The doll-house “Orota Biketta” is itself a mini-game of sorts, where you have to hit the correct head in order to have an available weakspot. Get the wrong head three times and it’ll enrage.

Oh and everything screams. EVERYTHING.

Overall however it still suffers from the same issues some other maps do; the enemies are too sparse for the size of the area. It’s quite spacious, so it’s incredibly noticeable if you’re running the field by yourself, as you have these massive areas populated by about 2 or 3 enemies…

Unique Qualities

Well, beyond enemy types which are often unique enough for every field there are some truly unique things about Kuron, at least for now. For one, it’s the only field in the game with a permanent Extra Hard difficulty attached to it.

Presumably, this was to support the next unique thing about the field; it is the only non-Ultimate field to give a currency. You are rewarded with 2 Chandra stones for clearing Extra Hard with an S-rank as well as a chance of obtaining one by clearing e-trials. Hans also offers two daily orders which can grant you 6 Chandra stones per day per character, assuming your alts can handle Lv70 Kuronites. This currency can be spent on a selection of 12* and 13* weaponry, making it the only area where you can earn items over time.

It’s also the only Free Field in which you’re forced to get 500 quest points before you’re granted access to the boss. This I guess is to mete out the quest currency at a relatively controlled pace. Related, it’s the only field where you can opt to never fight the boss at all if you want, as getting 1000 points clears the quest.

Finally, and something I feel somewhat strongly about, it’s the only field in which you’re allowed to go back to the campship and re-engage the boss where you left off should you die to it, even if you’re solo. This is for me, quite irritating as it’s one of those things that I always felt was un-necessarily punishing for solo players. While I’m happy they finally broke their own stupid rule on this, I wonder why this hasn’t been applied to the other fields and boss areas? It perhaps makes sense for some bosses (especially Advance Quests, where after all it is a risk that you need to consider), but given the fact you’re solo means you’re already having a harder fight and that your rank will go down if you return to the campship upon death, why was there any need to then tack on additional punishment by making them go back to the beginning of the stage?

In general, some of these unique qualities I have mixed feelings about. I love that you can actually work towards something and not depend entirely on random numbers, but I don’t love that this is yet another currency eating yet more of my inventory up. This is also why I’d be mixed about them retroactively adding these to the other fields, as while it would curb some of the RNG and make progression a thing, that’d be 13 more inventory spots eaten up by yet more currencies. If they’re going to do this, I feel the developers should seriously consider adding a currency storage of some kind.

Codotta Idetta

Opens up by donning its armor assembled from various toys and then screams at you. Because this is Kuron, you have to scream.

An interesting boss, but not at all a difficult one. Just break its limbs and while it’s down just kill it. If your gear is remotely up to scratch you should one-cycle this boss, even on Extra Hard.

Guar Zigmorde

The first yokai boss in the game (the other being a miniboss). How is she? Aggressive would be my choice of word. Low-hp characters may find her attacks difficult to dodge with how frequent they are, however she’s overall not that difficult a boss. She does frequently use a stunning attack and when she’s in phase 2 she can inflict injury with a number of her attacks as well as stun, so those depending on Massive Hunter might want to be wary. The frequency of her attacks can cause injury to stack dangerously high surprisingly quickly.

You can break her tails and her mirror. Breaking the tails reduces the number of projectiles she fires (though her tail projectiles aren’t usually a threat anyway) and breaking the mirror will expose a weak-spot.

The primary mechanic teased about her when Kuron was being discussed before was her curse of death. She will perform a pulling area-of-effect that will end with a pulse. If any player is hit with this pulse, they’ll have a blue orb floating above their head. I believe after a certain period has passed this orb will turn purple, making you eligible for execution. When she does this, any players eligible will be instantly incapacitated. This sounds threatening but in practice it really isn’t, as all you need to do is break her glowing thorax when anyone is cursed. This will break the curse and it has very low HP, even on Extra Hard, so this mechanic shouldn’t be a threat…ever. Her fast-stacking Injury de-buff is far more threatening in my opinion.

What’s fun is the curse of death is currently disabled on the boss because apparently it was causing people to disconnect from blocks. I don’t even know how they managed this fuckup, this is possibly as funny as the old “chairs cause lag” issue from way back…

Weapons of Kuron

Here I’ll go over the exchange weapons added with Kuron and purchasable with Chandra stones. Are they any good? Judge for yourself:

No Partizans, Wired Lances, Launchers, Rods or Dual Blades. They made sure to add yet another Katana though! That said, it appears no class was entirely left out this time.

In terms of attack stats, the 13*s typically seem to sit at stronger than Ares (just) and are slightly weaker than Slave weapons. That said, Ares Weapons are still better than most of them in terms of damage, in part thanks to latents. Rifle and Twin Machinegun might be stronger against weak points, not sure.

Note that 12* weapons come with 20% element and cost 80 Chandra stones, meaning you’ll need 240 to 50% one (at worst). 13* weapons cost 200 Chandra stones and come with 15% element, meaning you’ll need 800 Chandra stones at worst to 60% one. Notably, all of these weapons can drop in the quest. So it’s the “get lucky or get one eventually anyway” approach which I’m quite in support of.

Ideal Units

G-heaven posted up the Ideal Set bonus stats here. Re-posting the numbers below:

Unfortunately, the element icons are too blurry to tell total elements. Thanks to a video uploaded just today, it seems the units come with 5% ice, 5% fire and… 5% ice. I don’t know if those are inherent or if the units come with any element resist affixes though.

Each unit costs 20,000 miles, for a total of 60,000 for all armor, 240,000 for a weapon and 600,000 for all units and a maxed element weapon.

So a total of 150 all attack. Not bad, but the loss in PP has made the set rather unattractive for those already in possession of a Saiki set. The only remaining unknown factor is what stats each unit provides (not even element or the displayed Sdef really, as those could be affixes) That said, it doesn’t appear to be a bad armour set either and those who use Ideal weapons should certainly consider it, though affixing is afterall expensive and this set is only at its best with Ideal Weapons, which themselves are only good for killing bosses. It’s a niche set, so those not willing to spend the Meseta may want to pass these units by.

Level Up Quests

A new-ish feature. Truthfully, all these are are re-labelled Limited Quests but with a permanent +50% exp boost applied to them. Like Limited Quests they’re only going to be around for a limited time, but their primary intention is to help with levelling from 1 to 70.

So are they any good at this? Not when compared to other options, no. It could be an alright way to level up from 1-45, but beyond level 45 it’s likely better to just run Advance Quests. Since the entry requirement to Advance Quests is minimal, the permanent 100% exp boost is pretty much always available to you, so in light of this why would anyone run the Level Up Quest from 45 onwards? I mean with Advance Quests you can even work towards 12* weapons, as if the superior EXP wasn’t enough.

For that matter, new players are likely going to be carried to level 30 or so just by unlocking areas. It’s been a while since I ran a new character, so I don’t know the exact level you might end up at, but regardless this makes the actually useful window for the Level Up quest ever smaller…

PSO2 Anime

In case you forgot that was a thing (I know I did), looks like we got a promo image of the anime land some details about the staff involved located here at Crunchyroll. Reposting below cause that host seems to load slow as hell for me.

Guess this confirms the idea that it’s set on earth. Beyond that, still very little is know about the animation and is frankly likely to stay that way until it’s out. What a painful wait it will be.

34th Broadcast

Finally, the 34th broadcast is coming up. It’s on Nico which is a shithole of a website, but you should be able to find re-streams on the day. Of note, we seem to be getting a schedule detailing a series of “Large Updates” over a period of six months and there’s going to be a “major announcement” regarding the story. We’re also going to get a preview of the content for this fall.

The broadcast is set to happen on the 16th of August.

That’s all for this post! Maybe I should consider splitting these up in future… As always, give me a poke if there’s anything wrong in this post or if you have additional information.